In the post, the author (Chuck Rosenberg) tells us how they improve image searching at Google by labeling images with entities, rather than text strings. The entities they used are entities that you would find at a source such as Freebase. He tells us that they use Freebase Machine ID numbers for those labels:

As in ImageNet, the classes were not text strings, but are entities, in our case we use Freebase entities which form the basis of the Knowledge Graph used in Google search. An entity is a way to uniquely identify something in a language-independent way. In English when we encounter the word “jaguar”, it is hard to determine if it represents the animal or the car manufacturer. Entities assign a unique ID to each, removing that ambiguity, in this case “/m/0449p” for the former and “/m/012×34” for the latter.

You can see those labels in the Machine ID numbers in the Freebase URLs for them, and in the Freebase entries.

The Freebase Machine ID number for IBM is in the URL: http://www.freebase.com/m/03sc8 (note that this from the Google Trend’s URL “%2Fm%2F03sc8” differs from this by being HTML encoded the same as in the Freebase URL – unencoded it is “/m/03sc8”)

The Freebase IBM Entry. Note that the Machine ID number is similar to “/m/03sc8”

The future of Google search appears to be based upon entities. So, Google is using Machine ID numbers as Entity labels in Reverse Image Searches and is also using Machine ID numbers to track Trends for Entities.

Thanks. FreeBase is read only now. It’s possible that IDs from Wikidata might end up replacing Freebase IDs. If so, helping clients become actually notable, so that they can be listed in Wikipedia might be a goal to consider.

If you add json-LD to a page, you can use a sameas link to a freebase entity in that Json-LD to help clearly identify what entity that page is about. Barbara wrote a Search Engine Land article which shows how to do that, at:

Google have been using meta data such as this for a while. It’s good to see the inclusion of FreeBase as a differentiator between ambigious data sets. Images must be difficult to interpret in other ways. Using sameas links seems an obvious move for some sites.

Hello Bill,
what do you think will happen with these ids now that FreeBase is transferring data to Wikidata? Entities within Wikidata do have references to ids from FreeBase, but Wikidata itself seems to be using different thing as their primary id. At some point new entities in Wikidata will not be able to be linked to FreeBase just because they weren’t there in the first place. And this brings the question how long until Google comes up with its own id system.

Under Freebase, the ID system is Googles. There are machine ID numbers in Wikidata that are similar to the Freebase numbers now, and chances are that Google will start using those the way they’ve been using the numbers from Freebase. The details of the transition from one ID number type to another hasn’t been detailed publicly, but chances are it’s being worked upon.

Fairly unique topic and perspective, I must say. The post was not only informative for the fresher minds in the field, it was a lesson well revised for the experienced readers too. Thanks for sharing your perspective.

To optimize images that you may add to a web page under an entity approach, you would ideally want to include schema vocabulary upon the page that image appears upon, and use a sameas link that goes to the Freebase page of that entity. That would be one way of making that kind of connection between the entity and the image.

This is definitely interesting to think about, but has it been proven that utilizing these entity numbers has any sort of positive effect on SEO (or anything else)? I would just think Google would be patently against anything that’s supposed to directly “tell” Google what a site is supposed to be about (like meta keywords, for instance).

I definitely recommend people visit and participate in Aaron Bradley’s community on Google+. There’s a lot of thoughtful and helpful discussion going on there.

I think it’ worth paying a lot of attention to schema.org, especially since there is a schema extension process in place there, which means that it will grow over time. Keep on eye on the Schema blog for news of additions to the site.

“Mainentity” seems like a useful reference, when you want to make sure that people understand what a page is truly about (https://schema.org/mainEntity).

The head of search at Google, Amit Singhal, just announced his retirement at the end of February at Google, and he is going to be replaced by the founder of Metaweb, John Giannandrea. Metaweb is the company that brought Machine ID numbers to Google through their Freebase Knowledgebase. If you’ve been following how Google Trends works, you can see how Google has been tracking searches for entities by Machine ID number, as mentioned in this post.

Google stopped using meta keywords for rankings because people would often put dictionaries of things they wanted to rank for within those. If you include a sameas link on a page that contains an entity mentioned on the page where you’ve placed that link, and it is the same entity, so that the use of the Machine ID is consistently correct, then there shouldn’t be a problem; but if you put incorrect entity numbers on a page, then Google might not like that, and could potentially penalize a page, and they have said that they might take action against incorrect usage of schema vocabulary on pages of a site. Google isn’t against the use of correct information; it’s when you set out to deceive and manipulate rankings that Google has a problem with your using something like a sameas link.

This website is very informative to read. I am a huge follower of the things you talk about. I also love reading the comments, but it seems like a great deal of readers need to stay on topic to try and add new things in the original topic.

Really one of the best post shared by you. And I agree with you that images play an important role for making our site absolutely fantastic and better. This post will really help beginner’s mind because it is so informative. Deep description makes this post easy to understand and more clear.

It’s good to meet you, too. Happy that you liked this post. Images can make a difference in how web pages are received by visitors; and are a strong part in the transformation of Search towards a more entity-based endeavor. You have a great day, too.

Search Engines are shaped in large part by the expectations of searchers, and how they look for information on the Web. People do look for entities, and that has become a large part of how Google tracks information on the Web.

This post ha some informative information on google trends. Google Trends is great tool to get the best trending keyword phrases. I like http://www.keyword.io/ as well. It helped me with some keyword phrase suggestions.

If you point to the freebase URL in organizational schema markup for a business, you are telling Google that your business is the same entity as that described on the Freebase page a link is being provided to. That adds a preciseness that otherwise wouldn’t be there, which is helpful.

I had this same exact problem for a very long time and the only thing I could do was structure as much data as possible consistently and of course Freebase was a huge help. But I like how you take it even further in this article.

Bill, Thanks for connecting with me on twitter. Great article by the way. This is the 2nd time I’ve been back to reread. I look forward to your next live speaking engagement.
I wish I had your patience in reading search engine patents. 😉

Hello Bill,
what do you think will happen with these ids now that FreeBase is transferring data to Wikidata? Entities within Wikidata do have references to ids from FreeBase, but Wikidata itself seems to be using different thing as their primary id. At some point new entities in Wikidata will not be able to be linked to FreeBase just because they weren’t there in the first place. And this brings the question how long until Google comes up with its own id system.